‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ Rocks the Box Office With the Second Biggest Music Biopic Opening Ever

Troubles plagued the production. One director got fired. Reviews were mediocre. But Queen fans came out en masse for Bohemian Rhapsody. In spite of all the negative headlines and controversy, the biopic scored a massive $50,000,000 opening in theaters this weekend, immediately making it one of the biggest rock films ever. Here’s the full weekend box office chart.

Film

Weekend

Per Screen

Total

1

Bohemian Rhapsody

$50,000,000

$12,500

$50,000,000

2

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

$20,000,000

$5,311

$20,000,000

3

Nobody’s Fool

$14,000,000

$5,673

$14,000,000

4

A Star Is Born

$11,100,000 (-21%)

$3,235

$165,635,566

5

Halloween

$11,015,000 (-64%)

$2,918

$150,408,705

6

Venom

$7,850,000 (-26%)

$2,560

$198,663,348

7

Smallfoot

$3,805,000 (-20%)

$1,901

$77,484,301

8

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween

$3,700,000 (-49%)

$1,308

$43,832,316

9

Hunter Killer

$3,525,000 (-47%)

$1,296

$12,965,116

10

The Hate U Give

$3,400,000 (-33%)

$2,256

$23,460,924

Just one film in the long and cliche-filled history of music and rock biopics had a bigger opening than Bohemian Rhapsody, and that was the N.W.A. film Straight Outta Compton, which opened with $60.2 million in August of 2015. Bohemian Rhapsody, directed by Bryan Singer (at least until he was fired with several weeks left in production), easily blew past everything else, including signature music biographies like Walk the Line, Ray, and Selena. It instantly becomes one of the biggest films in its genre ever.

It was a solid weekend for new releases in theaters. Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, which had its own share of production problems (as well as multiple directors), grossed an estimated $20 million and came in second place on the box-office chart. Budget figures for the film weren’t available, but experts were predicting ticket sales somewhere in the middle $20s for the movie, putting the final total on the low end of expectations. And Nobody’s Fool, the new Tyler Perry comedy starring Tiffany Haddish and Tika Sumpter grossed $14 million, landing in third place for the weekend. For Perry, it’s the third-weakest opening of his long directing career.

It’s also worth noting that despite near-record grosses from Bohemian Rhapsody, the very similarly themed A Star Is Borncontinued its extremely strong box office run over the weekend, dropping only 20 percent from last week and grossing an additional $11.1 million. The latest remake of the classic show biz romance has now made $165 million in the United States and nearly $300 million worldwide. It’s a very impressive directorial debut for Bradley Cooper, who can probably parlay this hit into directing whatever he wants to do next — assuming what he wants to do next isn’t a biopic about the rock band Queen.